


The Fall of a Sparrow

by bearwonder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:06:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearwonder/pseuds/bearwonder
Summary: Remus, on the day of his mother's death.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a Monday when Professor McGonagall calls him to her office.

It’s not a surprise. Not really. She’d been sick for about a year, so Remus had had time to… get used to the idea. If one can get used to such a thing. He doesn’t know if the anticipation made it better or worse. He doesn’t know… well. He doesn’t know anything, really.

He’s been away from home for so long that in some ways, it’s hard to even understand what it means that she’s gone. The people around him won’t change; the days of classes, the quidditch matches, the full moons, they won’t change. The days will just keep coming, one after the other after the other. But he won’t get any more letters from her. And when he goes home for Easter, it’s hard to understand that she won’t be there. 

It’s been a long time since he was small enough for her to hold him, innocent enough to be comforted by the warmth of her arms. He’s long since known that that sense of security would never hold him again. But now it feels somehow even more distant – a second loss.

Remus doesn’t even think to face his friends before he’s being whisked through a fireplace into a home that hasn’t really been his since he was eleven, or maybe since he was five and his father stopped looking him in the eye. His father is there now, still not looking at him. There are others too, aunts and neighbors and a ridiculous mound of food on the stove, meat pies and pastries and fucking pots of soup, as if all a mother was were a hand to feed him. Later, he will understand that each dish is an act of kindness, a way for someone to show that they cared when there was nothing else that could be done. But right now, it just makes him feel sick.

He retreats to his bedroom, feeling like a ghost as he moves through the house, bodies and voices trying to fill a space that will never really be filled again. He sits on his bed. There’s nothing to do here. He doesn’t want to be here.

He goes for a walk.

He walks in circles around the perimeter of the village for hours. He has his wand with him, but he doesn’t cast a warming charm, even though it’s November. A warming charm would feel like a lie, a farce, when he doesn’t think he’ll ever be warm again. He’s still walking in circles when night falls, not that it’s late. There’s no brilliant summer sunset, just a draining of light from the sky in the west. It goes faster than it seems like it should, and then it’s dark. The moon is a waning gibbous – a small blessing, though a curse all the same.

Mum had never hated him for what he became each month. Through every moon, every time they had to move when someone got suspicious, every fight with Da, she never blamed him. Her love was unconditional, like a mother’s love should be. Was. But her love for him doesn’t exist anymore. Tomorrow at the church the pastor will say that she’s watching over them, that her love will always be with them, but that’s bullshit. Mum’s love for her son, be he wizard or no, was a pattern of neurons firing, and those neurons are dead, along with the rest of her. 

Remus falls to his knees on the frozen earth and wants to go home. 

He doesn’t want to go back to the house where he spent Hogwarts summers, hiding from a man who hated him. He doesn’t want to dig an old muggle suit out of the attic and transfigure it to cover his wrists and ankles and stand next to his father like a politician while a parade of old women he doesn’t know tell him what a wonderful person his mother was and how lucky he was to have her and how sorry they are that she’s gone. The cold from the ground is leaching into him where his knees are resting on it. He’s cold and he wants to go home.

He completes his last circuit around the village, and the ground of what was once his mother’s vegetable garden crunches beneath his feet with frost. He opens the door without knocking; when he steps inside, no one is there. It’s warmer than outdoors, but not by much. Remus retrieves his bookbag from his room and comes back downstairs to light a fire in the grate. He doesn’t see his father.

Maybe one day, he’ll regret not saying goodbye to her body. Maybe some future him will think he wanted to look down on a small, empty form in the shape of his mother, to kiss its cold skin and say “I love you” even though no one is there to hear it. Maybe. But right now, the fire has sprung to life in the grate and Remus is tossing a handful of green powder into it and telling it to take him home.


	2. Chapter 2

Professor McGonagall is on her feet with her wand pointed at the fireplace when Remus falls out of it, sooty and coughing and off-balance. 

“Mr. Lupin?” She lowers her wand. “Are you well? I had thought– the services–”

Remus just shakes his head. She presses her lips together.

“Very well, then. It’s well after hours, though, so if I might escort you?”

Remus nods. They walk down the corridors side by side, their footsteps, though soft, echoing in the emptiness. Professor McGonagall feels tense next to him in a way he’s not used to, as if she isn’t sure what to do. This can’t be the first time she’s told a student that someone they love is… is gone. It’s not like it’s her mother. He thinks maybe he should feel angry at her for being uncomfortable. He doesn’t. The torchlight flickers at their backs, casting long shadows in front of them.

After what feels like forever and no time at all, they’re standing in front of a portrait of a lightly snoring woman. McGonagall touches his forearm lightly, and he turns toward her.

“Mr. Lupin, I– Remus. I know there’s nothing I can say right now that– that will change anything. And I know you don’t like pity, so I won’t offer any. But I want you to know that if you ever need anything from me, my door is always open to you. Not just as your head of house, but as someone… someone who cares about you, and your well-being. All right?”

Remus nods, then opens his mouth for what might be the first time in hours. “All right. Thank you, professor.”

And then, and he’s not sure which of them moves first, Professor McGonagall is hugging him. She feels nothing like his mother – taller, for one thing, and bony where mum was soft, but… it’s something. It’s more than he knew how to ask for. 

When she releases him, Remus steps back and decides this is something he’ll never speak of, not even to his friends. They would laugh and hoot and rib him. They wouldn’t be cruel, but they wouldn’t understand, either. They wouldn’t understand how much it means to Remus, in this moment, after a day spent lost and alone. She’s not his mother and she never will be, but she knows he’s a werewolf and she’s offering to be there for him anyway, and right now, that makes Remus want to burst.

“Sparrow,” Professor McGonagall says, and the portrait swings open. But to Remus, it sounds like _spero. Dum spiro spero._ While I breathe, I hope.


	3. Chapter 3

The common room is empty. Not surprising – the clock above the mantelpiece reads 2:26 AM, and it’s a weeknight. November, too, so no exams coming up. Just Remus and the slowly dying fire. But Remus didn’t come here to be alone.

He heads up the staircase to the boys’ dormitories, feet falling lightly on the stone. He had planned to open the door quietly, too, but as soon as he reaches it he sees there’s no need – it’s clear from the crack under the door that every light in the room is on. 

He opens the door to see his three friends sitting cross-legged on James’s bed, talking in low voices for once in their lives, shoulders hunched and brows furrowed. Sirius is the first to see him and his face lights up before he seems to realize that a wide grin is inappropriate for the occasion and schools his features into something more like concern.

“Moony!” James whispers more loudly than Remus had known it was possible to whisper. He shuts the door behind him and James returns to a normal speaking voice – which honestly is probably quieter than the whisper. 

“Moony,” James says again, “all right then?” Sirius punches him hard in the side for his lack of tact, and Peter looks frantic, as if Remus is a bomb and he’s afraid James has just pressed the detonator.

Remus just shrugs a shoulder and drops his bag onto his bed. 

“No,” he says honestly, not looking directly at anyone. And then they’re there. All three other marauders envelop him in a group hug. He’s being squeezed from all directions and someone’s elbow is in his face and he can’t see and James definitely hasn’t showered since quidditch practice, and Remus hasn’t felt happier all day. And now that he’s allowed himself to feel happy, he starts to cry, and he grabs Sirius and presses his face into his shoulder even though Sirius has the least conveniently positioned shoulder for crying into and nearly falls over when Remus grabs him.

James and Peter back off a bit while Remus sobs, shuddering and half-screaming while part of his mind, ridiculous as it is, is preoccupied with hoping that one of his friends has cast a silencing charm on their room. He gradually becomes aware that Sirius is stroking his hair, and he allows himself to be held close as his sobs die down into occasional choking shivers and then into occasional hiccups. He pulls back slightly to look at his friends, in too raw a mindstate to think of being embarrassed. 

Peter is looking at him with a serious expression like he’s trying his best to look like an adult. “We’re here for you mate,” he says fiercely, and he reaches out to grip Remus’s shoulder tightly.

“Yeah mate,” says James, who has clearly been at a loss this entire time and has now just decided to follow the others’ lead, “we’re here for you.” He grips Remus’s other shoulder.

Remus chuckles, a weak, watery thing that surprises him nonetheless. 

“We mean it, Remus,” says Sirius, looking up at him. “Anything you need.”

“I know you do,” Remus says. “Thank you all. Really.” 

James and Peter seem to collectively decide it’s weird to still be holding onto Remus’s shoulders and let go, and he lets himself fall to sit on the bed. His legs are exhausted from he doesn’t even know how many hours of walking, and they buzz and tingle lightly when he sits. He’s not cold anymore, though, the last of the chill chased away by being sandwiched between three teenage boys. 

The others begin talking amongst themselves again, and Remus lets the sounds wash over him, not really listening. He may not have a mother, anymore, and he may not have a father who loves him. But he does have a family. He has three ridiculous, brilliant teenage boys who he already knows would do anything for him, who already have. They may not be able to take this weight off his shoulders, but they can help carry him when it gets too heavy. He knows that they will. 

As James and Peter turn out the lights one by one and say their good nights, it occurs to Remus that he’s still pressed into Sirius’s side. That Sirius has one hand holding Remus’s own, and his head resting on Remus’s shoulder. His breathing is soft and even, and he’s radiating sleepy warmth. Remus gently disentangles himself to shuck his clothing, change into his pajamas, and brush his teeth. When he returns to his bed, Sirius is still there, curled into fetal position on top of the covers. Remus looks down at him.

Things aren’t okay, and in some ways, they may never be okay again. There’s still the emptiness, still the numbness and disbelief. There’s still tomorrow to face, god knows how. But at least Remus isn’t alone.

He shakes Sirius awake just enough to get him under the covers, then crawls in beside him. He may be long past the age when he can be comforted by his mother’s arms, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help to be held. On a night when Remus had felt certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, the fatigue of walking for hours, the exhaustion of sobbing, and the calm, steady warmth beside him all come together, and he falls asleep in seconds. And if he and Sirius awake tangled together the next morning, James and Peter don’t say a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written all in one sitting. I guess all my stories take two hours or five years, and there is no in between. As I will continue to disclaim, I really do not know much about telling stories. 
> 
> The title is from Hamlet:  
> 
>
>> "We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be."  
> 
> 
>   
> For those of you less in love with Hamlet than I am, this is something Hamlet says right before the scene in which he dies. He's talking about death – you can't know when it will come, and you can't stop it when it does. Yet it will come. I mostly chose this title out of too much love of wordplay (sparrow sounds like _spero_ , Latin for "I hope"), and too much love of Shakespeare. Seven years ago, I played Horatio, and my Hamlet was a good friend of mine who had recently lost her older brother to suicide. This made the entire production even more emotionally intense, given the play's themes. And I remember feeding her this line onstage during dress rehearsals – it's convoluted, and I was better at memorization than she was. I don't even know how we managed it, but she got it right.
> 
> As for the moral question of R/S getting together right at this point – I got together with my boyfriend very shortly after his father's death. I worried a lot at the time that I was doing it for the wrong reasons, that I was drawn to his pain and just wanted to comfort him. But more than two years later, we still have a healthy and loving relationship. I think the truth is that I loved him even before then, it just took that time of emotional vulnerability for him to open up to me.
> 
> Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it <3


End file.
